Gretchen Mol

Gretchen Mol first burst onto the movie scene amid the hype of 1998's Rounders. She's stayed visible on stage and in movies like Celebrity, Cradle Will Rock and The Notorious Bettie Page.

Appeal

We knew Gretchen Mol was a very sexy lady as soon as we saw her much-touted cover of Vanity Fair in 1998. Wearing a dress that looked more like a wet T-shirt, she conveyed just the right blend of milk-fed innocence and titillation. We've been convinced ever since that "Gretchen" doesn't have to be an unsexy name.

Imagine our surprise when we saw Gretchen Mol get a whole new sexy look in the title role in The Notorious Bettie Page. Wearing a black wig with bangs, garters, a pointy bra, and not much else, Gretchen became the incarnation of the famous 1950s pin-up. We wonder what Gretchen's husband has to say about that, but the lucky guy would probably just gloat.

Success

In the late 1990s, Gretchen Mol went from being a struggling actress in New York to Hollywood's "it" girl. She's shared the screen with leading men like Jude Law, Ralph Fiennes, Johnny Depp, and Matt Damon -- a resume most actresses can only dream about. But even then, Gretchen was playing insubstantial "girlfriend" roles that didn't give her a chance to show off her acting chops. Gretchen, however, has toughed it out in showbiz for a decade and is landing better parts in smaller projects.

Gretchen shot to fame thanks to the hype surrounding the movie Rounders and a cover story in Vanity Fair, but then fell off the radar. As a result, many people might recognize Gretchen Mol's name (it's certainly unique) without remembering just what she is famous for. But her profile may be on the upswing once more: She recently had a prominent retro fashion shoot for The New York Times Magazine, which predicted Gretchen's comeback thanks to The Notorious Bettie Page.

Gretchen Mol Biography

Gretchen Mol was born on November 8, 1972, in Deep River, Connecticut. Gretchen's father, a school principal, and her mother, an artist, divorced when she was young. Gretchen grew up in a creative household with her mother and older brother, Jim, who aspired to be a film director; therefore, she was often the subject of her mother's photography and her brother's Super 8 videos.

Although Gretchen had a regular public-school education, she was already leaning toward performance as a career. She studied musical theater, sang in her school chorus and attended dance classes. Gretchen moved to New York after graduating from high school; she attended the American Musical and Dramatic Academy and performed on stage. She still had to take on odd jobs to get by, but one such job led to her big break. While she was working as a coat-check girl at a showbiz restaurant in 1996, an agent discovered her and got her work in a Coke commercial and on the TV sitcom Spin City.

gretchen mol in rounders

Gretchen made her feature-film debut in Spike Lee's Girl 6 (1996) in a supporting role as a phone-sex operator. Small parts in films such as The Funeral (1996), Donnie Brasco (1997) and The Last Time I Committed Suicide (1997) followed. When she was cast to play the "girlfriend" role again -- this time opposite Matt Damon in Rounders (1998) -- Gretchen became famous overnight. She was profiled in numerous magazine articles and was featured on the cover of Vanity Fair, which proclaimed her Hollywood's latest "it" girl. However, when Rounders proved a disappointment, the hype disappeared as quickly as it had come.

Nevertheless, Gretchen stayed on the A-list for a while afterward. Also in 1998, she starred with Jude Law in Music from Another Room and appeared as part of the ensemble cast in Woody Allen's Celebrity. 1999 saw Gretchen take a role in another Allen project, Sweet and Lowdown, play actress Marion Davies in Tim Robbins' Cradle Will Rock, and appear with Ray Liotta and Joseph Fiennes in Forever Mine.

gretchen mol as bettie page

Although fewer projects were coming Gretchen's way, she refused to give up simply because she'd been cast off by Hollywood's publicity machine. After small parts in Rules of Attraction (2000) and Get Carter (2000), Gretchen turned to television. She appeared in made-for-TV movies like Picnic (2000), her brother Jim's Freshening Up (2002) and The Magnificent Ambersons (2002), a cable-TV remake of Orson Welles' second film.

That same year, Gretchen starred in the short-lived TV series Girls Club. She also starred in the play The Shape of Things and reprised her role in the 2003 movie version.

In 2004, Gretchen married writer-director Tod "Kip" Williams and appeared in Heavy Put-Away. In 2005, however, Gretchen's career took an upswing; she accepted the sexy title role in The Notorious Bettie Page, which was well received at the Toronto Film Festival. Furthermore, she was cast in the film Puccini for Beginners (2006) and the TV movie The Valley of Light (2006).